Work:
La Rochefoucauld - Maxims
Po Bronson – What should I do with my Life
Milhay Csikszentmihalyi - Flow
Alain de Botton – The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
Alain de Botton – Status Anxiety
John Armstrong - Civilisation
John Armstrong - How to worry less about money
Tolstoy - The Death of Ivan Illych
Virginia Woolf - The Death of the Moth
Seneca - Letters from a Stoic

Travel:
Michel Houellebecq - Lanzarote
Geoff Dyer - Yoga for people who can’t be bothered to do it.
W.G Sebald - The Rings of Saturn
Alain de Botton - The Art of Travel
Thoreau - Walden
Teju Cole - Open City
Ryszard Kapuscinski - The Shadow of the Sun

]]>http://alaindebotton.com/book-list/feed/0A new priesthood: Psychotherapistshttp://alaindebotton.com/a-new-priesthood-psychotherapists/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-new-priesthood-psychotherapists
http://alaindebotton.com/a-new-priesthood-psychotherapists/#commentsThu, 26 Sep 2013 17:58:43 +0000Alain de Bottonhttp://alaindebotton.com/?p=1115For centuries in the West, there was a figure in society who fulfilled a function that is likely to sound very odd to modern secular ears. He (there were no shes in the role) didn’t sell you anything or fulfill any material need, he couldn’t fix your ox cart or store your wheat, he was there to take care of … Read more

]]>For centuries in the West, there was a figure in society who fulfilled a function that is likely to sound very odd to modern secular ears. He (there were no shes in the role) didn’t sell you anything or fulfill any material need, he couldn’t fix your ox cart or store your wheat, he was there to take care of that part of you called rather unusually ‘the soul’, by which we would understand the psychological inner part, the seat of our emotions and sense of deeper identity. I’m talking about the priest, the stock figure of pre-modern western life, who would accompany you throughout your years, from earliest infancy to your dying breath, attempting to make sure that your soul was in a good state to meet its maker.

Because in many Western countries, the priesthood is now a shadow of its former self, a key question to ask might be: where have our soul-related needs gone? What are we doing with all the stuff we used to go to the priest for? Who is looking after it? The inner self has naturally not given up its complexities and vulnerabilities simply because some scientific inaccuracies have been found in the tales of the seven loaves and fishes.

The secular response to the needs of the soul has tended to be private and informal: we find our own solutions, in our own time, we construct our own salvations as we see fit. Yet there remains in many a desire for more interpersonal, structured solutions to help us deal with the serious issues life throws us. Probably the most sophisticated communal response we’ve yet come up with to the difficulties of what we might as well keep calling, with no mystical allusions whatever, ‘the soul’ is psychotherapy. It is to psychotherapists that we bring the same kind of problems as we would previously have directed at a priest: emotional confusion, loss of meaning, temptations of one kind or another and, of course, anxiety about mortality.

From a distance psychotherapists look like they are already well settled in the priest-like role and that there is nothing further to be done or asked for. Yet one could argue that there are in fact a number of ways in which contemporary psychotherapy has failed to learn the right lessons from the priesthood and might benefit from a more direct comparison with it. My suggestion is that society would benefit if therapists were more explicitly reorganised along the model set by the priesthood; that therapists should be secular society’s new priests.

For a start, therapy remains a minority activity, out of reach of most people, too expensive or simply not available in certain parts of the country. There have been laudable efforts on the parts of activists to introduce therapy into the medical system, but progress is slow and vulnerable. The issue isn’t just economic. It’s one of attitudes. Whereas Christian societies would imagine there was something wrong with you if you didn’t visit a priest, we tend to assume that therapists are there solely for moments of extreme crisis – and are a sign that the visiting client might be a little unbalanced, rather than just human. A principally physical model of the self is popular, which leads to a preference for problems to be addressed by pills rather than interpersonal relationships. This isn’t to say that drugs are not important in many situations, simply to make a supplementary case for therapeutic conversation with a sympathetic other.

There’s also, in a serious sense, an issue of branding here. Therapists are hidden away. You don’t see them on the high street. They still aren’t regulated as they should be. We don’t make a place for them among other needs like those for bread or electrical goods. Imagine if the need for therapeutic dialogue was as honoured and recognised as the need for a haircut or a go on an exercise machine. Imagine if seeing a therapist wasn’t a strange and still rather embarrassing pursuit. Imagine if one could be guaranteed a certain level of service. Imagine if the consulting rooms looked better and were more visible, to make a case for the dignity of the activity.

Modern psychotherapists’ understanding of how humans work and what they need to cope with existence is, in my eyes, immensely more sophisticated than that of priests. Nevertheless, religions have been expert at creating a proper role for the priest, as a person to talk to at all important moments of life, without this seeming like a slightly unhinged minority thing to do. Many people may well say that the cafe and a few friends are all they need; after one or two big challenges, a great many more may feel that life is sufficiently complicated that they’d benefit from regular dialogue with a sympathetic third party in a stigma-free, well-branded reassuring location. For those interested in the challenge, there’s a long way to go before therapy really plugs the gap opened up by the decline in the priesthood.

]]>http://alaindebotton.com/a-new-priesthood-psychotherapists/feed/0Why museums of art have failed us – and what they might learn from religionshttp://alaindebotton.com/why-museums-of-art-have-failed-us-and-what-they-might-learn-from-religions/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-museums-of-art-have-failed-us-and-what-they-might-learn-from-religions
http://alaindebotton.com/why-museums-of-art-have-failed-us-and-what-they-might-learn-from-religions/#commentsThu, 26 Sep 2013 17:54:33 +0000Alain de Bottonhttp://alaindebotton.com/?p=1113You often hear it said that ‘museums of art are our new churches’: in other words, in a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion. It’s an intriguing idea, part of the broader ambition that culture should replace scripture, but in practice art museums often abdicate much of their potential to function as … Read more

]]>You often hear it said that ‘museums of art are our new churches’: in other words, in a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion. It’s an intriguing idea, part of the broader ambition that culture should replace scripture, but in practice art museums often abdicate much of their potential to function as new churches (places of consolation, meaning, sanctuary, redemption) through the way they handle the collections entrusted to them. While exposing us to objects of genuine importance, they nevertheless seem unable to frame them in a way that links them powerfully to our inner needs.

The problem is that modern museums of art fail to tell people directly why art matters, because Modernist aesthetics (in which curators are trained) is so deeply suspicious of any hint of an instrumental approach to culture. To have an answer anyone could grasp as to the question of why art matters is too quickly viewed as ‘reductive’. We have too easily swallowed the Modernist idea that art which aims to change or help or console its audience must by definition be ‘bad art’ (Soviet art is routinely trotted out here as an example) and that only art which wants nothing too clearly of us can be good. Hence the all-too-frequent question with which we leave the modern museum of art: what did that mean?

Why should this veneration of ambiguity continue? Why should confusion be a central aesthetic emotion? Is an emptiness of intent on the part of an art work really a sign of its importance?

Christianity, by contrast, never leaves us in any doubt about what art is for: it is a medium to teach us how to live, what to love and what to be afraid of. Such art is extremely simple at the level of its purpose, however complex and subtle it is at the level of its execution (i.e. Titian). Christian art amounts to a range of geniuses saying such incredibly basic but extremely vital things as: ‘Look at that picture of Mary if you want to remember what tenderness is like’. ‘Look at that painting of the cross if you want a lesson in courage’. ‘Look at that Last Supper to train yourself not to be a coward and a liar’. The crucial point is that the simplicity of the message implies nothing whatsoever about the quality of the work itself as a piece of art. Instead of refuting instrumentalism by citing the case of Soviet art, we could more convincingly defend it with reference to Mantegna and Bellini.

This leads to a suggestion: what if modern museums of art kept in mind the example of the didactic function of Christian art, in order once in a while to reframe how they presented their collections? Would it ruin a Rothko to highlight for an audience the function that Rothko himself declared that he hoped his art would have: that of allowing the viewer a moment of communion around an echo of the suffering of our species?

Try to imagine what would happen if modern secular museums took the example of churches more seriously. What if they too decided that art had a specific purpose – to make us a bit more sane, or slightly good or once in a while or a little wiser and kinder – and tried to use the art in their possession to prompt us to be so? Perhaps art shouldn’t be ‘for art’s sake’, one of the most misunderstood, unambitious and sterile of all aesthetic slogans: why couldn’t art be – as it was in religious eras – more explicitly for something?

Modern art museums typically lead us into galleries set out under headings such as ‘The Nineteenth Century’ and ‘The Northern Italian School’, which reflect the academic traditions in which their curators have been educated. A more fertile indexing system might group together artworks from across genres and eras according to our inner needs. A walk through a museum of art should amount to a structured encounter with a few of the things which are easiest for us to forget and most essential and life-enhancing to remember.

The challenge is to rewrite the agendas for our art museums so that collections can begin to serve the needs of psychology as effectively as, for centuries, they served those of theology. Curators should attempt to put aside their deep-seated fears of instrumentalism and once in a while co-opt works of art to an ambition of helping us to get through life. Only then would museums be able to claim that they had properly fulfilled the excellent but as yet elusive ambition of in part becoming substitutes for churches in a rapidly secularising society.

]]>http://alaindebotton.com/why-museums-of-art-have-failed-us-and-what-they-might-learn-from-religions/feed/0On Being Good: the Secular Virtueshttp://alaindebotton.com/on-being-good/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-being-good
http://alaindebotton.com/on-being-good/#commentsTue, 03 Sep 2013 13:48:12 +0000pedalohttp://alaindebotton.com?p=1Once we’re over about 12 years old, we’re seldom encouraged to be nice. We’re expected to make efforts in all kinds of areas (chiefly around work), but the idea of expending energy thinking about, and then practicing the art of kindness sounds bizarre, even eerie. The notion of trying to be a ‘good person’ conjures up all sorts of negative … Read more

]]>Once we’re over about 12 years old, we’re seldom encouraged to be nice. We’re expected to make efforts in all kinds of areas (chiefly around work), but the idea of expending energy thinking about, and then practicing the art of kindness sounds bizarre, even eerie. The notion of trying to be a ‘good person’ conjures up all sorts of negative associations: of piety, solemnity, bloodlessness and sexual renunciation. Announce that you are working on your body and you will attract envy and respect. Declare that you are working on your character, and you will be thought insane. It’s an indication of just how out of favour the project of being good has become that ‘wicked’ has morphed into a term of praise.

The main exception to this lack of interest in applied ethics comes in religion. Whatever disagreements one might have with their definitions of goodness or the practical implementations of their own creeds, religions do not stop trying to encourage their followers to be good. They give them commandments and rituals, they deliver them sermons and ask them to rehearse lessons in prayers and in songs.

Even for a life-long atheist, there is something interesting about these efforts. Might we learn something from them? The standard answer is that we can’t, because religious morality comes from God, which by definition atheists have no time for. Yet the origins of religious ethics couldn’t of course (for an atheist) have come from God, they lay in the pragmatic need of our earliest communities to control their members’ tendencies towards violence, and to foster in them contrary habits of harmony and forgiveness. Religious codes began as cautionary precepts, which were projected into the sky and reflected back to earth in disembodied and majestic forms. Injunctions to be sympathetic or patient stemmed from an awareness that these were the qualities which could draw societies back from fragmentation and self-destruction. So vital were these rules to our survival that for thousands of years we did not dare to admit that we ourselves had formulated them, lest this expose them to critical scrutiny and irreverent handling. We had to pretend that morality came from the heavens in order to insulate it from our own laziness and disregard.

Even if we now realise we made up our own moral exhortations, we have no cause to do away with them all. We continue to need reminders to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who has a hand in wishing to make us so. We no longer have to be brought into line by the threat of Hell or the promise of Paradise; we merely have to be reminded that it is we ourselves – that is, the most mature and reasonable parts of us (seldom present in the midst of our crises and obsessions) – who want to lead the sort of lives which we once imagined supernatural beings demanded of us.

It’s often said that we now can’t agree as a society on a code of good behaviour – and that this is why people are now especially tolerant of, and afraid to complain about, misbehaviour. Christianity used to have list of 7 key virtues that it believed all its followers should heed. There’s nowadays no scientific answer to exactly how many virtues a non-believer might choose to be guided by; yet what seems key is to recognise that we probably need some kind of list to correct our worst tendencies.

If I had to design a list of 10 virtues that could apply today, I might go for the following (they speak most clearly to me, precisely because I find them hardest to apply):

ResilienceThe art of keeping going even when things are looking dark; of accepting reversals as normal, of refusing to frighten others with one’s own fears and of remembering that human nature is in the end reassuringly tough.

EmpathyThe capacity to connect imaginatively with the sufferings and unique experiences of another person. The courage to become someone else and look back at oneself with honesty.

PatienceWe lose our temper because we believe that things should be perfect. We’ve grown so good in some areas (putting men on the moon etc.), we’re ever less able to deal with things that still insist on going wrong; like traffic, government, other people… We should grow calmer and more forgiving by getting more realistic about how things actually tend to go.

SacrificeWe’re hardwired to seek our own advantage but also have a miraculous ability, very occasionally, to forego our own satisfactions in the name of someone or something else. We won’t ever manage to raise a family, love someone else or save the planet if we don’t keep up with the art of sacrifice.

PolitenessPoliteness has a bad name. We often assume it’s about being ‘fake’ (which is meant to be bad) as opposed to ‘really ourselves’ (which is meant to be good). However, given what we’re really like deep down, we should spare others too much exposure to our deeper selves. We need to learn ‘manners’, which aren’t evil – they are the necessary internal rules of civilisation. Politeness is very linked to tolerance, the capacity to live alongside people whom one will never agree with, but at the same time, can’t avoid.

HumourSeeing the funny sides of situations and of oneself doesn’t sound very serious, but it is integral to wisdom, because it’s a sign that one is able to put a benevolent finger on the gap between what we want to happen and what life can actually provide; what we dream of being and what we actually are, what we hope other people will be like and what they are actually like. Like anger, humour springs from disappointment, but it’s disappointment optimally channelled. It’s one of the best things we can do with our sadness.

Self-AwarenessTo know oneself is to try not to blame others for one’s troubles and moods; to have a sense of what’s going on inside oneself, and what actually belongs to the world.

ForgivenessForgiveness means a long memory of all the times when we wouldn’t have got through life without someone cutting us some slack. It’s recognising that living with others isn’t possible without excusing errors.

HopeThe way the world is now is only a pale shadow of what it could one day be. We’re still only at the beginning of history. As you get older, despair becomes far easier, almost reflex (whereas in adolescence, it was still cool and adventurous). Pessimism isn’t necessarily deep, nor optimism shallow.

ConfidenceThe greatest projects and schemes die for no grander reasons than that we don’t dare. Confidence isn’t arrogance, it’s based on a constant awareness of how short life is and how little we ultimately lose from risking everything.

The exhortations we need about being kinder are typically not terribly complex. These are all things we know we ought to do but which we manage to forget at key moments. We are holding to an unhelpfully sophisticated view of ourselves if we think we are above hearing well-placed, blunt and simply structured reminders about goodness. There is greater wisdom in accepting that we are in most situations clunking and rather simple machines, with only a few moving parts and in want of much the same firm, basic guidance as is naturally offered to children and domestic animals.

A lack of absolute agreement on how to be good should not in itself be enough to disqualify us from investigating and promoting the notion of such a project. Ultimately, each one of us needs to formulate his or her own list of important virtues. Although the priority of moral instruction should be general, the list of virtues to guide us should be specific, given that we all incline in astonishingly personal ways to idiocy and craziness.